In 1812 James Wallis (fl.1810-25) published “Wallis’s New British Atlas’, the largest of three county atlases he produced. He was born it is believed in Southampton in 1784. He was apprenticed to John Roper in 1799 and freed on 5 February 1811. It appears he started out as an engraver becoming a bookseller, printer, stationer and publisher. The maps are derived from the George Cole and John Roper ‘British Atlas’ of 1810, themselves derived from John Cary. Wallis did however claim that they were engraved in a ‘superior manner’. They were produced for Samuel Augustus Oddy whose publishing career appears to have been short. There was a later edition by Wallis himself c.1814. By 1819 the plates were in the hands of George Ellis whose ‘New and Correct Atlas of England and Wales’ was published in that year. Although Wallis’s name is retained on the maps all of the other imprints below the maps have been removed with the usual exception of Lancashire and Warwickshire. Those of Berkshire, Cornwall and Lancashire have above them ‘Second Edition with Considerable Improvements and Additions, by G. Hebert, Geographer’.

The other notable difference is the lack of a general map of England and Wales. None is called for in the Contents and in all but one other example noted, none exists. This example however is supplied with one. It is not the previous Wallis plate which had always required a fold to fit. Here a new unsigned plate of similar size to the county maps is placed before the title. Provenance: with old IHS library stamp to title page; bookplate of Reverend Bernard James Addis affixed inside front cover; Burden Collection duplicate acquired pre-1975. Batten & Bennett (1996) no. 78.3; Chubb (1927) 367; Tooley’s Dictionary (1999-2004); Worms & Baynton-Williams (2011).